Friday, March 05, 2010

Searching.

I'm not working the Oscars this weekend, so maybe I'll take some time to actually go to the movies. Either I haven't been motivated to see much this year or there really hasn't been much I've wanted to see.

I kind of think it was that second thing. Also, I've been pretty busy with work (don't get me started on the family stuff).

Way back last Monday, I got sent down to San Diego to follow the night search activities in the Chelsea King disappearance. She was still missing at the time. An initial arrest had been made, but her body hadn't been found yet.

It was pretty grim. Sure, all the news people talked and socialized a bit in the area where we were all parked. Still, it just seemed like a dark and depressive evening.

We were pretty close to the same area where David Westerfield and the parents of Danielle Van Dam lived. Danielle Van Dam was a nine year old girl that Westerfield was convicted of abducting and murdering.

Reporter Greg Mills and I had a simple story to put together for the ten and eleven o'clock newscasts. There wasn't much to see from the media area that had been set up. There also weren't a lot of people around to question.

Most of the people we had access to were friends and family of the missing girl and for the most part they weren't willing to be interviewed on camera.

That makes our job a lot more difficult.

One friend of the family told us off-camera that they were still holding out hope that Chelsea would be found alive.

I learned the next day that Chelsea's body had been recovered from a shallow grave near the area of the search.

That was my Monday.

It's been a week of ups and downs.

I'm still standing, but very happy that today is Friday. I see an ice cold beer in my future.